The age of robots is here

By Mark Goldfeder

Updated 1518 GMT (2218 HKT) June 10, 2014

From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

The evolution of the humanoid robot – Picture the scene: You walk into a coffee shop and order a cappuccino. The young man behind the counter hands you a drink and wishes you a pleasant day with a Colgate smile. Suddenly his expression drops, his face turns stiff, there's a muted bang and some smoke emerges from his nose. He crashes to the ground in an almighty rigid clunk.

Could this be the fate of some poor future android? Will malfunction one day be the only means of telling human and robot apart?

Here, CNN takes you through the evolution of the robot: from literary fancy to paranoid androids with artificial brains and emotional baggage.

From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1920: The world's first 'robot' – It turns out man has feared robots rebellion since the word robot was coined. It was Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his 1920 play "Rossum's Universal Robots" ("R.U.R.") that the term was coined to describe his factory-made people who, in his play, went from serving humans ("robota" is Czech for forced labor) to revolting and rendering them extinct.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1928: A very British robot – Even British robots have afternoon tea, don't you know? Eric -- the first British robot ever to exist -- seemed to believe he had an example to set. The invention of the Englishman Captain W.H. Richards, Eric was able to turn his head and take a bow. Presumably Eric v2.0 loved to queue and always said please, thank you and sorry.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1932: The alpha robot – After 14 years and thousands of dollars, the young British scientist Harry May claimed to have made "the perfect robot". Alpha the robot could talk, sing, laugh, tell the time and date, fire a revolver and whistle (but only for half an hour). Perfect.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1934: Mac the Mechanical Man – Move over David Hasselhoff. these ladies have found a real man to take for a dip in ocean. Well, perhaps not, but at 250 pounds, 7.5 feet tall and with a steely look in his eyes, Mac the Mechanical Man had a certain allure on Venice Beach back in the 1930s. What the picture doesn't show is his inventor Leighton Hilbert, who, just a few meters away is fiddling with Mac's remote controls. Way to cramp his style, Hilbert.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1939: Smoking robot – Look we've all got our vices ok? Even tin men. The most pointless function for any robot ever, devised purely as a means to resemble man, electrical engineer Charles Lawson built a robot that could smoke. You have to feel for the robot -- a coerced addict. Shame on you Mr Lawson.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1950: Talking bots, Turing Test – So, they can walk the walk and talk the talk but can they actually think, wondered computer scientist Alan Turing. In 1950 he devised the Turing Test: a test to determine whether a robot can display intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human. The idea is simple -- a person communicates with a human and a machine through a wall and if they can't tell who's responding, the machine passes.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1975: Carwash bot – But who cares if they're big thinkers anyway? As long as they can perform simple tasks like washing the car and the kitchen, feeding the cat, and cooking dinner. Or picking up the kids from school, paying the bills, ANY OF THE ABOVE? What are robots good for anyway?

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1976: Robotic traffic warden – Ah yes, they make fabulous traffic wardens. Mr Sam here was tried out by French road authorities near the Arc de Triomphe in the Seventies, to warn motorists of approaching roadworks. His job was effectively just to hold a flag up for a very, very long time.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

1998: Express yourself – Mr Sam the traffic warden may be unwavering in his mood, despite having one of the world's most monotonous jobs, but by the Nineties Japanese professor Yoshiyuki Miwa decided robots should have the right to let us know when they're a little bit peeved. He developed the Eye Robot which has the ability to express emotions through its eyes such as joy, sadness, anger and embarrassment.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

2006: Actroid android – OK so we seem to like making robots look like humans. But this guy had to take it one step further and build a mechanical version of himself, complete with imitation mannerisms and facial expressions. Hiroshi Ishiguro is the director of Japan's Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, who developed the first "actroid," a humanoid robot with features and functions almost indistinguishable from a human's.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

2007: My perfect woman – Austin Powers thought he had found his perfect woman, until bullets starting firing at him from her brassiere. Here's hoping Le Trung's Aiko fembot doesn't come with such a severe drawback, especially considering the inventor spent his entire life's savings plus a few credit card loans to make her. Aiko, Japanese for "beloved one", can make tea and coffee, tell the weather, read a magazine and is the first android to react to physical stimuli and mimic pain.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

2011: Human robot love – Swoon! What a stud. Biceps, kissable lips ... what more could a girl want? 2011 was the year that human-robot love became a genuine area of research. But what would happen if the attraction between the robot and human wasn't mutual. A lonely robot hearts column perhaps? Certainly Business Insider's 13 sexiest robots ever made won't have to worry.

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From tin man to bionic man: the evolution of the humanoid robot14 photos

2013: First robot suicide – Last month it was a dark day for robotics as the world's media reported the first "robot suicide". A family came home to find the remains of their cleaning bot the Irobot Roomba 760 in the kitchen. The robot had been switched off before they left the house, but had reactivated itself and moved along the kitchen surface to the hotplate, where it began to melt and then burn, leaving just a small pile of ashes. Mocking reporters suggested that a life that only consisted of chores was no life at all. You really can't blame him.

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Story highlights

Computer program passes the Turing Test for artificial intelligence for the first time

Mark Goldfeder: It's a sign that the age of robots has truly arrived

He says it's time to rewrite the law to permit recognition of robots as persons

Goldfeder: A robot could be held liable for damages -- and it might need insurance

For the first time, a computer program passed the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. A computer on Saturday was able to trick one third of a team of researchers convened by the University of Reading into believing it was human -- in this case a 13-year old boy named Eugene.

The Turing Test, named for British mathematician Alan Turing, is often thought of as the benchmark test for true machine intelligence. Since he introduced it in 1950, thousands of scientific teams have tried to create something capable of passing, but none has succeeded.

And that outcome means we need to start grappling with whether machines with artificial intelligence should be considered persons, as far as the law is concerned.

Mark Goldfeder

In 1920, Karel Capek introduced the mainstream world to the concept of artificial people in his play "Rossum's Universal Robots" (the word robot comes from the Czech word for serf labor). Since then, society has been fascinated by the idea of a robot walking among us, or even crossing over into personhood like a modern-day Pinocchio.

The fascination continues; just take a look at this year's box office. In the recent film "Transcendence," Johnny Depp starred as a sentient machine. In the critically acclaimed "Her," Joaquin Phoenix's character fell in love with an advanced operating system named Samantha. Coming attractions include more installments in the rebooted "RoboCop" franchise; "Star Wars: Episode VII," with its universally lovable droids; and, of course, "Terminator 5."

A question at the heart of all these movies is this: At what point does a computer move from property to personhood?

Robotic legal personhood in the near future makes sense. Artificial intelligence is already part of our daily lives. Bots are selling stuff on eBay and Amazon, and semiautonomous agents are determining our eligibility for Medicare. Predator drones require less and less supervision, and robotic workers in factories have become more commonplace. Google is testing self-driving cars, and General Motors has announced that it expects semiautonomous vehicles to be on the road by 2020.

When the robot messes up, as it inevitably will, who exactly is to blame? The programmer who sold the machine? The site owner who had nothing to do with the mechanical failure? The second party, who assumed the risk of dealing with the robot? What happens when a robotic car slams into another vehicle, or even just runs a red light?

Liability is why some robots should be granted legal personhood. As a legal person, the robot could carry insurance purchased by its employer. As an autonomous actor, it could indemnify others from paying for its mistakes, giving the system a sense of fairness and ensuring commerce could proceed unchecked by the twin fears of financial ruin and of not being able to collect. We as a society have given robots power, and with that power should come the responsibility of personhood.

From the practical legal perspective, robots could and should be people. As it turns out, they can already officially fool us into thinking that they are, which should only strengthen their case.

The notion of personhood has expanded significantly, albeit slowly, over the last few thousand years. Throughout history, women, children and slaves have all at times been considered property rather than persons. The category of persons recognized in the courts has expanded to include entities and characters including natural persons aside from men (such as women, slaves, human aliens, illegitimate children and minors) as well as unnatural or juridical persons, such as corporations, labor unions, nursing homes, municipalities and government units.

Legal personality makes no claim about morality, sentience or vitality. To be a legal person is to have the capability of possessing legal rights and duties within a certain legal system, such as the right to enter into contracts, own property, sue and be sued. Not all legal persons have the same rights and obligations, and some entities are only considered "persons'" for some matters and not others.

Just last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Hobby Lobby case about whether a corporation is person enough to ask for a religious exemption.

New categories of personhood are matters of decision, not discovery. The establishment of personhood is an assessment made to grant an entity rights and obligations, regardless of how it looks and whether it could pass for human.

To make the case for granting personhood to robots, it's not necessary to show that they can function as persons in all the ways that a "person" may be understood by a legal system. It's enough to show that they may be considered persons for a particular set of actions in a way that makes the most sense legally and logically.